The present invention relates to a sheet-like material processing apparatus such as securities, for example, checks or slips, which is supplied with sheet like materials of the same kind, classifies them into several classes, stacks the sheet-like materials of the same class to make a unit sheet-stack, and bundles the unit sheet-stack.
The apparatus of this type has a sequence of steps for processing the sheet-like materials. Firstly, sheet-like materials such as securities are set in a sheet supply section; the sheets set are successively taken-out sheet by sheet; the taken-out sheets are inspected, by an inspecting section, under a given inspecting condition and classified into three groups including reusable sheet group, unreusable sheet group and unidentifiable sheet group. The reusable sheets are effective and reusable and will be called normal sheets. The unreusable sheets are effective but not reusable and will be called soiled sheets, the unidentifiable sheets are those which are unidentifiable in the inspection section, for example, those sheets taken out superposedly, or those sheets not to be processed by the apparatus now used. In this respect, the unidentifiable sheet will be referred to as a sheet to be rejected. After the classifying step, the normal and soiled sheets are counted and stacked into a corresponding unit sheet-stack having, for example, 100 sheets depending on the result of the count, and then the unit sheet-stack is bundled and impressed with a given print.
The bundled soiled sheets are burned in an incinerator for the discard. Before the burning of them, the bundled sheets are generally punched, by a punching machine, at a given location on the soiled sheets, for example, where numbers, prints or signs are marked, for prohibiting those from being again used erroneously or maliciously, and for ease of the succeeding handling the soiled sheets. Conventionally, the bundles of soiled sheets are once collected and then are supplied to the punching machine by the hands. This requires a more strictness for the handling the bundles of the soiled sheets transferred from the sheet-like material processor. Additionally, the punching work of the bundled soiled sheets, or sheet-invalidation process, is troublesome and time-consuming.